There are few possible ways of splitting a string with delimiter-separated values to an array in Bash. Here I present five of them.
1. Using tr command
Output:> [123]
> [456]
> [567]
> [5]
> [343]This method will produce incorrect array due to space in "567 5", but it works fine if there are no spaces in the $STR variable.
2. Using IFS (Internal Field Separator) variable
Output:> [123]
> [456]
> [567 5]
> [343]This method works fine even if there are spaces.
3. Using read command
Output:> [123]
> [456]
> [567 5]
> [343] This method also works fine even though there are spaces in the $STR variable.
4. Using sed command
Output:> [123]
> [456]
> [567]
> [5]
> [343]This method will also produce incorrect array due to space in "567 5", but it works fine if there are no spaces in the $STR variable.
5. Using set command
Output:> [123]
> [456]
> [567 5]
> [343] This method also works fine.
References
This post was mainly inspired by
this StackOverflow question and my need to perform string 2 array conversions in bash.
